Chapter 1 - The Woman in My Father's ChairI always assumed the young goth woman who showed up at my mother's kitchen table every Saturday was just an unusual new friend she'd picked up somewhere.
After Mom died, I found out their relationship had actually started because of something far deeper than either of them ever let on. And the more I learned, the more I understood that my mother had spent years quietly carrying a regret none of us had ever really understood.
Ruby waited until almost everyone had cleared out of the funeral home before she finally walked over to me.
I'd tried not to watch her all through the service. She'd stayed near the back in a long black coat, silver rings catching the light every time she shifted her weight. For months I'd seen her sitting at Mom's kitchen table every single Saturday like she'd always belonged there. I never once understood why.
Now my mother was gone, and Ruby was crossing the room toward me with one hand closed tight around something.
"Maeve."
I turned. Her eyes were swollen from crying.
"Thank you for coming," I said.
She nodded and slowly opened her palm. A tiny brass key sat there, worn smooth with age.
I frowned. "What's this?"
"Your mother told me to give it to you after she died."
My stomach tightened. "What does it open?"
"She said you'd understand once you found it."
"Why didn't Mom just give it to me herself?"
Ruby hesitated. "Maybe because she figured you'd shove it in a drawer somewhere and never actually go looking for what it opens."
That landed harder than she probably meant it to. "You don't know me."
"No," Ruby said quietly. "But Doris did."
For a second, grief curdled straight into irritation. "Then why did my mother trust you with this and not me?"
Something softened in her face. "I didn't know her better than you did."
"Then why do you have the key?"
"Because I knew a part of her you didn't."
Before I could push further, my husband, Tom, appeared at my elbow with my coat over his arm. Ruby stepped back.
"Don't put it away in a drawer," she said, and then she was gone, threading through the last of the mourners toward the door.
I stood there with the key pressed into my palm, one question circling and circling.
What had my mother spent all that time hiding from me?
The first time I ever met Ruby, she was sitting in my father's old recliner, drinking tea out of Mom's good china like she'd earned the right to it.
I'd walked in carrying two bags of groceries and stopped dead in the doorway. "Mom?"
My mother, Doris, looked up from the table. At seventy-three she was still happiest right there in that little kitchen, surrounded by her books and her tea and the garden just outside the window.
"There you are, Maeve."
The woman beside her turned around. She couldn't have been much past twenty-five. Black clothes from her collar down to her boots, tattoos running the length of both forearms, several silver piercings glinting along her jaw.
"This is Ruby," Mom said. "She's a friend."
Ruby stood, polite. "Nice to meet you."
"You too," I said, though my eyes kept drifting to my father's chair.
Ruby noticed. "Am I sitting somewhere I shouldn't be?"
"No, it's fine." I set the groceries down harder than I meant to. "How do you two even know each other?"
"We met over coffee," Mom said.
"At the bookstore café," Ruby added. "She told me the novel I was reading was garbage."
Mom smiled into her tea. "It was garbage."
I tried to laugh along, but something was already pulling tight in my chest. "I thought we were spending the afternoon together, Mom."
Her smile faded a notch. "We can do that next Saturday."
"You're asking me to leave?"
"We're discussing something private, Maeve."
Ruby immediately started to offer to go instead. Mom stopped her with one hand. "No."
That hurt more than it probably should have. I grabbed my purse off the counter.
"Maeve," Mom said, gentler now. "I love you. But I don't need you managing every single part of my life."
"Saturdays are usually ours."
"I know."
I glanced between the two of them. "Fine. I'll get out of your way."
On my way to the door I noticed a small wooden box sitting by Ruby's elbow. Mom reached over and casually threw a dish towel over it. That did absolutely nothing to make me feel better.
"Fine," I said again.
Mom sighed. "There it is again."
"What?"
"That word you use when nothing about the situation is actually fine."
I left before my temper said something I'd regret.
That night I complained to Tom over dinner. "She was there again."
"Ruby?"
"Two Saturdays running now."
Tom studied me carefully. "Did your mother seem upset? Uncomfortable at all?"
"No. That's almost what bothers me most."
"Why would that bother you?"
"Because she looked completely at ease with her. Happy, even. And I still don't know the first real thing about who this girl is."
Tom waited, letting me get to the rest of it myself.
"She's twenty-something," I went on. "Mom barely knows her, and suddenly the two of them are having these private conversations every single weekend."
"You think she's after money?"
"I don't know what I think."
"Has your mother given you any real reason to believe she's being taken advantage of?"
"No."
He leaned across the table and took my hand. "Then what's actually bothering you, Maeve?"
I stared down into my tea for a long moment before I admitted it. "I feel shut out."
"Because you're worried about her?"
"Because I'm jealous," I said, and saying it out loud made it worse, not better.
Tom squeezed my hand. "Then stop guessing what's going on. Pay attention instead."
So I did.
Ruby kept coming back. Before long, Saturdays clearly belonged to the two of them, not to me. One afternoon I arrived early and caught sight of a stack of birthday cards spread across Mom's kitchen table. The moment she saw me in the doorway, she swept them straight into that same wooden box.
"What are those?"
"Old things."
I started wiping down the counter out of pure habit, needing something to do with my hands.
Mom reached over and touched my wrist to stop me. "Not everything needs you to fix it, sweetheart."
May you like
"I'm not fixing anything."
She gave me a tired little smile. "You usually are."
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